


42° of Refraction

by writing2death



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-17
Updated: 2011-02-17
Packaged: 2017-10-15 17:39:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/163230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writing2death/pseuds/writing2death
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's difficult to go from a friendship to a relationship, and this is new. They don't know how to do this yet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	42° of Refraction

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt _Rainy Day_ from Wren.

_It’s difficult to go from a friendship to a relationship_ – Oprah Winfrey

 

The tone on the jet is tired. The past week has been rough on everyone, and a proper night’s sleep is all anyone is thinking about. It feels like they’ve been living out of their suitcases too long, and eating too much bad take out, and taking turns sleeping in a series of five minute cat naps. It’s unfortunate that this is a familiar feeling.

It’s fitting that when they step off the jet, blurry-eyed and a little off kilter from waking up too quickly, they step right into a sudden freak rainstorm. And just because it’s fitting doesn’t mean it doesn’t get one everyone’s tiny, last nerve.

Reid almost swallows his tongue when JJ snaps at him as they get off of the elevator at their floor. She’s viciously trying to wring the excess water out of her hair. When she catches sight of his face, she sighs. “Sorry,” she says sincerely.

“No problem,” he says back, feeling as wet as she looks.

“Today can’t get any worse, can it?” she asks before smiling at him briefly and walking as briskly as she can toward her office.

Reid tries his best not to drip all over the carpet.

He’s secretly looking forward to doing the stack of paperwork on his desk. The thought of sitting down to his paperwork in dry clothes makes him want to be home more than he wants to be here right now. (Usually, it works the opposite, because here there are people and home is alone. Sometimes alone isn’t what he would choose.)

He weighs all of this against sleep. Sleep. He remembers that it’s nice somewhere at the back of his mind, like a far away vague thing.

He’s shuffling his papers into his bag when Hotch appears at his side.

“Reid, can I see you in my office for a minute?”

Reid blinks. “Um, sure,” he says because his first thought is _what did I do wrong?_. And then he immediately feels stupid. “I mean, yes. Sorry. Just a second,” he corrects uselessly. He watches Hotch’s back as he walks away.

It would be nice, he thinks, if he wasn’t one of those people whose every thought was apparent by the expression on his face. He glances at Prentiss to make sure she didn’t think that exchange was weird (even though he knows it wasn’t). She looks like she’s not paying attention, but it’s difficult to tell with her – Prentiss can be sneaky.

This thing with Hotch is relatively new. And by relatively new, Reid means it kind of just happened. Neither one of them are thinking too deeply about anything right now (at least, Reid is trying very hard not to, but he can’t always control the thoughts that go through his head). They’re still figuring everything out. They’re don’t know yet exactly how they’re supposed to do this.

And the team probably knows something’s going on but Reid’s not sure they know what it is.

He closes the door behind him in Hotch’s office. “Hi,” he says quietly.

“Hi.” Hotch looks at him silently for a moment before running his fingers through his hair and breathing loudly through his nose. Reid thinks he looks tired, and unsurprisingly just as wet from the rain as Reid.

Reid wonders when his life got to be so awkward. Then he remembers: always. So, he wonders instead when his relationship with Hotch got to be so awkward. He thinks it might be around the time they accidently slept together.

And by slept together he means fell asleep in the same room, on the same bed, and possibly snuggled a little bit, with no sexual activity whatsoever. (That part came later).

“Do you have a lot of paperwork tonight?”

He can tell that Hotch is trying to break some of the tension in the room, like throwing him a rescue raft. Not that Reid wants to be thinking about any types of water right now – the rain was enough. He pictures his fuzzy blanket and tea and paperwork, and smiles.

“Uh, as much as anyone else. But not that much,” he adds at the last moment, rushed, and possibly just catching on. Hotch looks at him sceptically. “Really,” he says.

The silence sneaks out of the corners again and Reid clutches his hands around the strap on his bag. He supposes instead of actually catching the rescue raft, he just ended up watching it float by.

“How about you?” he asks back because this is an uncomfortable silence if he’s ever heard one. “Although, I suppose you always have a lot? Not that you need to have a lot – or, actually, I guess you do – but you don’t, um, deserve a lot…”

This is why, on occasion, he has considered never speaking again. He bites his lip. He can’t remember the last time he stuttered so much.

Hotch is smiling one of those smiles that makes the skin crinkle delicately around the edges of his eyes and creates interesting laugh lines and Reid is sure he could look at it forever without becoming bored.

“Of course I do,” Hotch says, clearing his throat. “I was thinking that maybe we didn’t have to do it alone.”

Reid loves the way that Hotch doesn’t phrase that as a question. But, he loves a lot of things about Hotch. “That. Yes. I would like that.”

Hotch relaxes his shoulders a fraction and smiles slightly.

“Just so we’re clear,” Reid says a second later, “I’m going to you, right?”

Hotch’s expression tells him that yes, he is.

* * *

As Reid leaves the building and subsequently gets dosed with another sheet of rain, he has a sudden (kind of inappropriate) vision of himself and Hotch huddled together under an umbrella. These are of course the kind of thoughts he tells no one.

Instead, the wind turns his umbrella inside out. He’s forced to concede defeat and sprint the rest of the way to his car attempting to shield his head from the rain with his arms.

They don’t leave together because they’re careful about it. It would cause more problems that it would solve, and Reid’s not sure he’s supposed to be staying the night anyway.

He wonders if it looked weird that Hotch left before him. He hopes not.

The ride to Hotch’s apartment is wet and seems very long, if only because his shirt is sticking to his skin uncomfortably. It doesn’t help that he’s unexplainably nervous when he knocks at the door. He’s rocking on the balls of his feet when Hotch answers. He hasn’t been home long enough to have changed out of his wet clothes yet, but he is carrying a towel in one hand.

“Jack is at Jessica’s for the night,” Hotch says by way of greeting. “It’s pretty late, and I didn’t want to wake him.”

Reid watches him shut the door with a click at the same time as absentmindedly towelling his hair. It sticks up in a slightly spiky way, and Reid has to smile at it. Hotch offers the towel to him, and Reid awkwardly attempts to pat his clothes dry.

“Um. I just realised I only have my go bag here,” Reid says, and immediately wishes he hadn’t said anything. He must have something clean in there, somewhere.

Right. Well. Reid might be convinced that’s okay when Hotch cups the back of his head and brings Reid’s lips down to his. Reid makes a muffled sound of surprise and grips the side of Hotch’s shirt lightly. It’s still wet.

When they break apart, Hotch smiles at him slightly. “I’ve got a dryer.”

It takes Reid a second to catch up. “Oh. Um, all right.” He tries to control his flush. It’s a habit he’s never been able to wholly squash.

It feels oddly intimate when they’re standing in Hotch’s laundry room and Hotch’s hands are untying his tie and setting it aside, when he begins to unbutton Reid’s shirt. Reid returns the gesture, hoping Hotch doesn’t notice that his fingers are shaking.

Reid wonders if that’s normal, considering they aren’t even kissing.

Hotch automatically hands him an overly large sweatshirt from the dryer when Reid is searching through his bag for something clean other than sweatpants. Hotch always seems to know what he’s thinking – he’s not sure if it’s a good or a bad thing. Maybe it’s a good thing and a bad thing. At any rate, it’s certainly one of those things that Reid tries (and fails) to not think about.

The sweater too big on him in the shoulders and just slightly too short near the wrists, but it’s very possibly the most comfortable thing he’s ever worn. (Secretly, Reid likes the thought of himself in Hotch’s clothes. He’s pretty sure it’s supposed to be the other way around, with Hotch liking him in his clothes. He hopes it works that way too).

It’s easy from there to follow Hotch back to his living room and take the drink he offers. The window in his living room is foggy with the rain, and the sky is dark. Reid sighs because he doesn’t like that it’s dark out. He doesn’t like winter because it gets dark so early.

There’s paperwork sitting on Hotch’s coffee table, and Reid knows his own is stacked neatly at the bottom of his go bag, but he watches as Hotch puts a movie in instead.

Reid tucks his feet under him and folds himself up and sits a respectable distance away from him on the couch because he’s not sure if he should touch or not. In the end, Hotch pulls him closer and Reid goes willingly. When the movie finishes and Hotch kisses him, Reid has no recollection of the plot because throughout the entire thing all he could think about was all the places he and Hotch were touching, and all the points of contact between them.

The kiss is sweet and Reid can’t help but grin when he pulls back.

“We can do one of two things,” Hotch says. One of his hands is sitting on Reid’s thigh and the other is on his arm. It’s distracting in a good way.

“Is one of them for me to stay here?” Reid asks, still smiling. “Because I’d like to.”

He thinks Hotch looks relieved but he can’t tell for sure. “That is an option, yes. Do you want to know the other one?”

“No, thanks.” Reid is the one who kisses Hotch this time. He tries to be demanding but mostly just ends up smiling into Hotch’s mouth. “So, I’m assuming you didn’t mean staying on the couch,” he says, fingers grasping at Hotch’s collar.

Hotch rolls his eyes in what Reid knows is an affectionate way. He keeps the way it makes his stomach back flip to himself.

Reid is hesitant at first but follows Hotch into the bedroom anyway. The first time they did this was in their shared hotel room, after a case. (It had to be _after_ the case. If they’d fallen asleep in the same way during the case, they wouldn’t be where they are now, and they both know that). The second time they did this was here, in Hotch’s apartment, but they never actually made it to the bedroom.

At the same time, this is somewhat familiar.

It doesn’t matter anyway because he doesn’t even have time to look around the room before Hotch is kissing him and Reid is closing his eyes and they end up in the middle of the bed. Hotch is a solid presence on top of him, and as much as Reid loves looking at him in his brown sweater, he likes him better out of it.

Reid laughs when they don’t quite manage to get his own sweater off of him without a bit of a fuss. He gets tangled in it and Hotch untangles him, smiling quietly. “You’re a walking safety hazard,” he says.

Hotch walks his fingers up Reid’s sides, and Reid does his best not to squirm away because he’s ticklish. They’re kissing again which is perfectly fine with Reid. He’s pretty sure he’d be happy spending a very large chunk of his life kissing Hotch, if he could.

When Hotch finally takes them both in hand and fists them together, Reid has to break from kissing and press his face into Hotch’s neck, breathing loudly. He fits one hand between them and laces his fingers with Hotch’s, stroking together with him.

Reid knows he’s useless after, and Hotch tells him so, laughing. Reid is okay with this but makes some incoherent noise into the pillow and pushes at his shoulder anyway, just for show. He rolls over to find Hotch looking at him.

“What do we do now?” he asks.

“Well, it’s between paperwork and sleep,” Hotch says dryly, even though Reid knows he knows that’s not really what he was asking.

He’s surprised to find he’s not worried at all. “Okay,” he says, fitting himself against Hotch. He’s also surprised to find that he didn’t over think that small move entirely.

(Sometimes, he thinks he over thinks things until the original thought is actually lost in the process. And thinking backwards isn’t always nearly as successful as one might think.)

Reid counts tonight as a win because it is definitely worth it.

* * *

Unfortunately, the feelings of elation don’t always last the morning after. Not that Reid has experienced many mornings after to compare this with. What he does know is that he’s mildly worried about all the things he was worried about before last night again.

In his understanding, that’s kind of the way life works though. He supposes he could always blame the endorphins for lulling him into a false sense of security but somehow he doesn’t think so. It wasn’t _all_ the fault of the endorphin rush.

Because chocolate (or peas) could never substitute for the way Hotch looks when he’s just woken up with blurry eyes and his hair all tufted up on one side, or the way he gestures tiredly to the coffee pot and watches sceptically as Reid only puts two teaspoons of sugar into his cup, as if he’s expecting him to have more sugar than coffee.

There’s paperwork sitting waiting to be finished, and Reid hopes that they actually will end up doing it together.

And, Reid wants to know everything about Hotch, and loves everything about Hotch.

And sometimes, that can be enough.

 

There's a Swedish Proberb, _Shared joy is a double joy; shared sorrow is half a sorrow_.


End file.
